Those who want to facilitate bigotry and shut down dissent among voices
that have been silenced for too long are exploiting the language of free
speech.

Oscar Wilde, who knew a few things about censorship, once wrote that he
could "tolerate everything except intolerance". Today, the rhetoric of
free speech is being abused in order to shut down dissent and facilitate
bigotry. On behalf of everyone with liberal tendencies, I’d like to
know why and how we’ve allowed this to happen.

Before we start, let's all take a deep breath and acknowledge that
sometimes change can be scary. Right now, cultural politics are changing
extremely fast. Right now, ordinary people can speak more freely and
organise more efficiently than ever before.

That single fact is pushing culture to the left too quickly for some
people's comfort, and the backlash is on – including from liberals who
don’t like the idea that they might have to update their ideas. Writing
on Facebook, Marlon James named this backlash "the Liberal Limit", and
spoke about mainstream writers in every centre-left outlet from the Guardian to the New Republic who are:

“Tired of learning new gender pronouns . . . Tired of having to figure
out how to respond to a Rihanna video. Tired of feminists of colour
pointing out fissures in whatever wave of feminism we got right now.
Tired of black kids on campus whining all the time. Tired of everybody
being so angry because without their alliance all you coloured folk
would be doomed. Liberal but up to the point where it scrapes on
privilege.”

Every generation of self-defined progressives has to tackle the fact that progress doesn’t end with them. Every generation of liberals has to deal with its own discomfort when younger people continue to demand liberation.

Instead of doing that hard, important work, today’s liberals – particularly older, established white male liberals – are dismissing the righteous activism of today’s young radicals as petty "outrage". They are rephrasing critique of their positions as ‘censorship’ so they don’t have to contemplate the notion that those critics might have a point. They are enraged that they are being challenged, and terrified, at the same time, of being deemed regressive. But liberals need a reason to think of themselves as just while ignoring alternative views, and "free speech'’ has become that reason.

I hear the phrase "freedom of speech" so often from people trying to shut down radicals, queers, feminists and activists of colour that the words are beginning to lose all meaning. So before that happens, let’s remind ourselves what freedom of speech means, and what it doesn’t. I didn’t want to have to write a listicle, but you brought this on yourselves...

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The movie, 'Schindler's List,' was timed to come out when the people who went to high school in the 1970s were teaching school. The generation that sat in all white classes and gave the world, 'Love Boat,' 'Three's Company,' 'Hotel New Hampshire,' and the disease AIDS, had become teachers. Fuck you, Warren Kinsella. Fuck you.